Gerard Depardieu Gives Up French Passport After Tax Dispute

PARIS–One of France’s leading actors, Gerard Depardieu, said he is surrendering his French passport and social security after the country’s prime minister called his move to Belgium, apparently for tax reasons, “pathetic.”

Mr. Depardieu is at the center of a controversy in France after the mayor of a Belgian town said the actor was moving to his constituency, possibly to pay lower taxes than in France. French Premier Jean-Marc Ayrault said the move was “pretty pathetic.”

In a letter to Mr. Ayrault published in Sunday’s edition of French weekly Le Journal du Dimanche, Mr. Depardieu said: “I’m leaving because you think success, creation, talent and anything different should be punished.

“I am sending you back my passport and social security, which I have never used.”

Since President Francois Hollande’s Socialist government announced it will introduce a 75% income tax on those earning more than 1 million euros ($1.32 million) a year, some of the country’s wealthiest have been setting up residency in countries with lower taxes.

Mr. Depardieu said in the letter that over a period of 45 years he has paid EUR145 million in tax and employed 80 people in his businesses. In 2012, Mr. Depardieu, known in the U.S. for playing the role of an illegal alien in “Green Card,” said he paid 85% tax on his income.

“I’ve no place to complain or to boast, but I refuse to be described as pathetic,” Mr. Depardieu said.

Mr. Ayrault’s office declined to comment on the letter.

Ministers in the French government were quick to react, however. Labor Minister Michel Sapin said in a radio interview on Europe 1 there is “nothing more normal” than for those that earn a lot of money to pay a lot of tax.

Separately, culture and communication minister Aurelie Filippetti said in a telephone interview with news channel i-Tele: “We shouldn’t be receiving moral lessons from people who abandon the battlefield when we need everyone to be mobilized.”

Speaking in Brussels Friday, Mr. Hollande said fiscal treaties should be changed to deal with cases of people who take up residency “in a Belgian village.”

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